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London Film Festival · 2008

London Film Festival 2008

Experimenta

Cutting edge cinema, artists’ films and video and the avant-garde.

Programme

32 films · 1 review

Jump to a film

21 Alleys

Study of gentrification in Boston.

(Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: Robert Todd)

Ah Liberty!

Study of tearaways on a remote farm.

(Country: UK; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)

Amazons

Portrait of girls who keep horses in St Petersburg.

(Country: Russia; Year: 2003; Director: Alina Rudnitskaya)

Anywhere, U.S.A.

Told in three segments, ranging from satirical to tragic, the film is a wildly original look at American manners, prejudices, and family dynamics.

(Year: 2007; Director: Anthony Haney-Jardine; Stars: Perla Haney-Jardine)

Astika

Documentary about a Danish recluse.

(Country: UK, Denmark ; Year: 2007; Director: Ben Rivers)

Besame Mucho

Documenting locals who find escape - along with plenty of attendant bickering - in a choir.

(Country: Russia; Year: 2006; Director: Alina Rudnitskaya)

Bitch Academy

Documentary about classes which aim to teach women to seduce men.

(Country: Russia; Year: 2008; Director: Alina Rudnitskaya)

Deep Six

The film image of a loaded truck, careening free of its position in the frame, speeds along a mountain road towards an inevitable fate.

(Country: Finland ; Year: 2007; Director: Sami van Ingen)

De Tijd

Computer animated abstraction in three dimensions. Slowly evolving geometric forms suggest sculptural figures and waning shadows.

(Country: Netherlands ; Year: 2008; Director: Bart Vegter)

Easter Morning

Conner's freewheeling camera chases morning light in a hypnotic blur of colour and multiple exposures. This final work by the artist and filmmaker rejuvenates his rarely seen 8mm film Easter Morning Raga (1966). With music by Terry Riley.

(Country: USA ; Year: 2008; Director: Bruce Conner)

The Feature

An autobiographical journey through life in the New York art world, featuring Cindy Sherman, Larry Rivers and Andy Warhol.

(Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: Michel Auder, Andrew Neel; Stars: Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Alice Neel)

Four Toronto Films

A suite of films exploring aspects of the city.

(Country: UK; Year: 2007; Director: Nicky Hamlyn)

Le Genou d'Artémide

(Country: Italy, France; Year: 2007; Director: Jean-Marie Straub; Writer: Cesare Pavese; Stars: Andrea Bacci, Dario Marconcini)

Horizontal Boundaries

O'Neill's dizzying deployment of the 35mm frame-line is intensified by Carl Stone's electronic score. A hard and rhythmic work, thick with superimposition, contrary motion and volatile contrasts, reminiscent of his pioneering abstract work of prior decades.

(Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Pat O'Neill)

How To Conduct A Love Affair

An unexpected letter leads to an unanticipated encounter and an extravagant gift.

(Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: David Gatten)

In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni

Debord's final film is "a denunciation of cinema and society at large, an unremitting diatribe against consumption".

(Country: France; Year: 1978; Director: Guy Debord; Writer: Guy Debord)

In The Kingdom Of Shadows

Set in metal type, a passage from Maxim Gorky's review of the Lumières melts into a pool of molten lead.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2005; Director: Francisca Duran)

Itinéraire De Jean Bricard

The Loire in long moving takes of the river in silvery black-and-white.

(Country: France; Year: 2008; Director: Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub; Writer: Jean Bricard, Jean-Yves Petiteau, Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub; Stars: Jean Bricard)

Last Days In A Lonely Place

An elegy for a departed friend.

(Country: US; Director: Phil Solomon)

The Miracle of Don Cristobal

Nineteenth-century engravings are coupled with Puccini and conjoured into life.

(Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Lawrence Jordan)

New Surprise Film

Apparently: "A little anticipation never did anyone any harm; you'll have to be there to find out what it is."

(Country: UK, Denmark; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)

Origin Of The Species

Documentary about a 70-year-old Scot who has been trying to divine the essence of Darwin.

(Country: UK; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)

The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly

A saturated cine-miniature inspired by Dutch 17th-century painting.

(Country: USA ; Year: 2008; Director: Charlotte Pryce)

Recordando El Ayer

In the shadow of an elevated subway line in Queens, New York, the residents, streets and stores of a Latino community evoke a sense of transience and displacement.

(Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: Ben Rivers)

RR

Celebration of the US railroad, its impact and influence.

(Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: James Benning )

Sarabande

"Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the sarabande," says the director, which leaves us curious, if nothing else.

(Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Nathaniel Dorsky)

Singing Biscuits

In a description that is hopefully a lot more impenetrable than the film it describes, the organisers say: "A gospel cry rings out across the decades, disrupted in space and time, fading but resilient."

(Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: Luther Price)

Small Miracles

Sci-fi hallucinations seem commonplace as Hechtman invokes mysterious natural phenomena: an extreme case of mind over matter.

(Year: 2006; Director: Julia Hechtman)

Sur Le Passage De Quelques Personnes à Travers Une Assez Courte Unité De Temps

Anti-documentary about the Bohemian underground in Paris.

(Country: France; Year: 1959; Director: Guy Debord; Writer: Guy Debord)

Triste

"The 'sadness' referred to in the title is more the struggle of the film itself to become a film as such, rather than some pervasive mood," says the director. We're confused, but powerless to argue.

(Country: US; Year: 1978; Director: Nathaniel Dorsky)

Winter

Exploration of a San Francisco winter.

(Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Nathaniel Dorsky)

Yah Chayka!

Review preview for Yah Chayka!

It ends up packaging human existence as a photo album of tenuous associations and treacly banalities.

Anton Bitel · 2.5 out of 5
Poet and musician combine forces in an experimental film comprised of stills and music.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2008; Director: Shuntaro Tanikawa, Wakako Kaku; Writer: Shuntaro Tanikawa, Wakako Kaku; Stars: Teruyuki Kagawa, Machiko Ono)

Full review